The conch we are after in the Bahamas are Queen Conch, "Stombus gigas," a species of edible sea snail with beautiful shells. We tend to find them near seagrass beds in pretty shallow water (less than 20') on the banks. We aren't looking for pretty pink shells out there, but rather shells with a bit of growth on them. But what is the most important thing we are looking for? Shells with a well-formed flaring lip are the only ones that are legal for harvest as these are "mature" conch. It doesn't necessarily matter if the shell is big as long as the lip is well-formed with a clear flare. That may sound a little vague, but once you start looking at a lot of conch it gets pretty easy to decide if a conch is adolescent or mature. Conch have been overfished in recent years so we are also very conscious about only collecting what we will eat right now--we don't collect a ton and freeze them.
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| A mature Queen Conch |
Getting them is as easy as picking them up! No special gear needed! In face, it's actually illegal to get the conch using SCUBA gear. Getting them out of the shell is the slightly harder part, but with practice it gets easier. Frank is actually pretty darn fast with extracting them and cleaning them now and happily shows fellow cruisers how it's done. The tools--a rock hammer/hammer/hatchet, a butter knife, and a sharp knife. The hammer (claw end if it's a regular hammer) is used to make a hole between the 2nd and 3rd row of spires from the top of the shell. Then you slide the butter knife into the hole, scraping down the inner wall of the shell to separate the muscle from the shell. After that, you just grab the conch's foot and yank it out! Ok, there's a bit of suction to overcome so it's not quite that easy, but it's not too hard! Then you use the sharp knife to take off the head, guts, foot...anything that's not white meat. And ta-da, you're ready to eat conch!
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| Collecting conch on a shallow skin dive. |
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| Cleaning the conch! The boys have the extraction process well in hand. The bottom pic is the conch bodies before they are cleaned. |
But how does one eat conch? The most popular preparations for our crew are conch fritters, conch salad, and cracked conch. I haven't made conch fritters, but that's just because I'm not a huge fan of deep frying anything so I save those for when we are out to eat on one of the islands. But I do make conch salad and cracked conch!
Conch salad is basically conch ceviche. Our dear friend Ronnie Brown, owner of Brown's Garden on Great Harbour Cay, was happy to share his preparation with us! The basic conch salad is conch, salt, white onion, green bell pepper, tomatoes, sour orange, lime, and a bit of goat pepper for some heat. Basically the conch and veggies get diced, it all gets salted and juiced, and after a minute or two your lunch is ready! It's bright, tasty, and healthy! Sometimes we don't have all the ingredients and have to go with something a little simpler, like scorch conch. Scorch conch is prepared with bigger pieces of conch (so the end result is a little chewier), onion, citrus juice, salt, and goat pepper if you're feeling spicy (go for it!). Simple and delicious!
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| Simple ingredients make a delightful salad! When we don't have goat pepper on hand, I use a few shakes of a Bahamian hot sauce (made with goat peppers) to spice it up. |
Our youngest crew member isn't a huge conch salad fan so I'll also make cracked conch every now and then. Cracked conch is basically fried conch. The meat is tenderized a lot with a meat mallet, then breaded and fried. I use an egg dredge and a panko breading seasoned with salt, pepper, and cayenne, then just pan fry for a few minutes. I like to serve it with a dipping sauce of some sort (horseradish, mayo, ketchup, black pepper is good), too.
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| Tenderized conch gets dredged in egg and bread crumbs before getting fried to a golden brown. |
So that's a little about one of our favorite Bahamian foods...hope you consider giving it a try!
~Jo, 1st Mate
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